Social Networking Sites for Nurses

Advancing your nursing career these days takes a bit of work and a lot of social media savvy. And we're not talking about just making a few entries on Facebook or even LinkedIn. Fortunately for health care professionals, there are a number of targeted social media sites that can really give your nursing career a healthy boost.

For starters, there's AllNurses.com. One of the really active nursing networks around, this site has as large number of threads and readers (my last visit showed 5,325 visitors online). The well-organized site is easy to navigate and covers everything from medical breakthroughs to career help.

There's also Nurse.com - Nursing Forum, which features nursing-related news, forum discussions, and over 12,000 job postings. Here you'll find ample networking opportunities to interact with thousands of other nurses of all levels and specialties. Once you join the Nurse.com forum, you'll have ready access to a variety of post topics. You'll also be able to communicate privately with other members, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Forum topics cover everything from student nursing to continuing education to events. Plus, news and topics local to your geographic area.

Finally, there's MedXCentral. Open to all medical professionals, the site lets you connect with others via a Facebook page and provides updates directly to your Facebook account. The good thing about MedXCentral is that it's subdivided into many groups within a medical specialty, so you can talk shop with someone with virtually identical career interests. And yes, MedXCentral works in conjunction with Twitter and YouTube, letting you engage in various levels of career networking with a social slant.

For more information on health careers, visit www.healthcarejobsiteblog.com

Alex A. Kecskes has written hundreds of published articles on health/fitness, "green" issues, TV/film entertainment, restaurant reviews and many other topics. As a former Andy/Belding/One Show ad agency copywriter, he also writes web content, ads, brochures, sales letters, mailers and scripts for national B2B and B2C clients.